[4][5] In establishing the Coalition under the leadership of founding Executive Director Paul Evan Peters, these sponsor organizations sought to broaden the community’s thinking beyond issues of network connectivity and bandwidth to encompass digital content and advanced applications to create, share, disseminate, and analyze such content in the service of research and education.

[6] [7] CNI works on a broad array of issues related to the development and use of digital information in the research and education communities.

[9] Over 200 member organizations constitute CNI's membership, representing higher education, publishing, network and telecommunication, information technology, and libraries.

[12] Based in Washington, DC, CNI holds semi-annual membership meetings that serve as a bellwether for digital information issues and projects.

[16][17][18][19][20][21] The organization regularly releases a pre-recorded video series which highlights timely topics in the networked information landscape.